Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural Economy: Evidence from China and India

Emran, M. Shahe and Ferreira, Francisco and Jiang, Yajing and Sun, Yan (2019): Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural Economy: Evidence from China and India.

Abstract

We extend the Becker-Tomes (1986) model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by occupational dualism (farm vs. nonfarm) and provide a comparative analysis of rural India and rural China. Using two exceptional data-sets, we estimate father-sons intergenerational educational persistence in farm and nonfarm households free of truncation bias due to coresidency. The sons in rural India faced lower educational mobility compared to the sons in rural China in the 1990s and earlier. Father’s nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining a son’s schooling in India, but separable in China. However, the separability observed for the older cohorts in rural China broke down for the younger cohort. Evidence from supplementary data on economic mechanisms shows that the extended Becker-Tomes model provides plausible explanations for both the cross-country heterogeneity (India vs. China), and the evolution of mobility across cohorts in China.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Educational Mobility, Rural Economy, Occupational Dualism, Farm-Nonfarm, Complementarity, Coresidency Bias, China, India
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J62 - Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O15 - Human Resources ; Human Development ; Income Distribution ; Migration

References

Acemoglu, D, and D. Autor (undated), Lectures in Labor Economics, Book Manuscript, MIT.

Ahsan, R, A. Chatterjee, and M. Shahe Emran (2019), \Are Markets Substitutes for Better Educated Parents? Evidence from Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Rural India", Paper presented at the Royal Economic Society Annual Conference, 2019, University of Warwick.

Altonji, Joseph G., Todd E. Elder, and Christopher R. Taber (2005). Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools." Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 1, pp. 151-84. doi:10.1086/426036.

Asher, S, P. Novosad, and C. Rafkin (2018), Intergenerational Mobility in India: Estimates from New Methods and Administrative Data", Working Paper, Dartmouth College.

Azam, Mehtabul, and Vipul Bhatt. (2015). ``Like Father, Like Son? Intergenerational Educational Mobility in India.” Demography 52(6):1929–59.

Azam, Mehtabul \& Geeta Kingdon \& Kin Bing Wu, (2016). "Impact of private secondary schooling on cognitive skills: evidence from India," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 465-480, September.

Bardhan, Pranab. (2014). ``The State of Indian Economic Statistics: Data Quantity and Quality Issues.” Unpublished.

Becker, Gary S & Tomes, Nigel, 1986. "Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 1-39, July.

Behrman, J., E. Hannum, M. Wang, and J. Liu (2008): Education in the Reform Era, in Brandt and T. Rawski Ed: \emph{China's Great Economic Transformation}, Cambridge university Press.

Behrman, Jere, A. Gaviria and M. Szekely (2001), ``Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America”, Economía, Vol. 2 (1): 1 – 44.

Bhalotra, Sonia, and Samantha Rawlings. (2013). ``Gradients of Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries.'' Review of Economics and Statistics 95(2):660–72.

Bjorklund A and K. Salvanes. (2011). \char`\"{}Education and Family Background: Mechanisms and Policies,\char`\"{} Handbook in the Economics of Education vol 3, E A Hanushek, S Machin and L Woessmann (es.), pp. 201-247.

Black, S. E. and P. Devereux (2011). ``Recent Developments in Intergenerational Mobility'', Handbook of Labor Economics.

Black, S. E, Paul J. Devereux, and Kjell G. Salvanes (2009), ``Like father, like son? A note on the intergenerational transmission of IQ scores'', Economics Letters, Volume 105, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 138-140.

Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez. (2014). ``Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(4):1553–123.

de Brauw, Alan, and Scott Rozelle, (2008), Reconciling the Returns to Education in Rural China, Review of Development Economics 12(1): 57-71.

Emran, M. Shahe, and Forhad Shilpi. (2011). ``Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Rural Economy: Evidence from Nepal and Vietnam.'' Journal of Human Resources 46(2):427–58.

Emran, M. Shahe, and Forhad Shilpi. (2015). ``Gender, Geography and Generations: Intergenerational Educational Mobility in Post-Reform India.'' World Development 72:362–80.

Emran, M Shahe, \& William Greene, \& Forhad Shilpi, (2018). "When Measure Matters: Coresidency, Truncation Bias, and Intergenerational Mobility in Developing Countries," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 53(3), pages 589-607.

Emran, M. Shahe, and Sun Yan. (2015a). ``Magical Transition? Intergenerational Educational and Occupational Mobility in Rural China: 1988–2002.'' World Bank Policy Research, Working Paper 7316.

Emran, M. Shahe \& Sun,Yan (2015b). ``Are the children of uneducated farmers doubly disadvantaged? farm, nonfarm and intergenerational educational mobility in rural China,'' Policy Research Working Paper Series 7459.

Emran,M. Shahe, \& Shilpi,Forhad J., (2018). ``Estimating intergenerational mobility with incomplete data : Coresidency and truncation bias in rank-based relative and absolute mobility measures," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8414, The World Bank.

Emran. M Shahe, \& Asadul, Islam \& Forhad, Shilpi, (2018). ``Distributional Effects of Corruption When Enforcement is Biased: Theory and Evidence from Bribery in Schools in Bangladesh,'' MPRA Paper 84637, University Library of Munich, Germany.

Fan, Yi, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang. (2015). ``The Great Gatsby Curve in China: Cross-Sectional Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility.” Working Paper. Hong Kong: CUHK.

Hertz, Tom, Tamara Jayasundera, Patrizio Piraino, Sibel Selcuk, Nicole Smith, and Alina Veraschagina. 2007. ``The Inheritance of Educational Inequality: International Comparisons and Fifty-Year Trends.'' The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy: Advances 7(2).

Knight, John, Terry Sicular, and Yue Ximing. (2013). Educational Inequality in China: the Intergenerational Dimension. in Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to the Harmonious Society, eds. Li Shi, Luo Chuliang, and Terry Sicular, ch.4. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lanjouw, P, \& Rinku Murgai, \& Nicholas Stern, (2013). ``Nonfarm diversification, poverty, economic mobility, and income inequality: a case study in village India,'' Agricultural Economics, vol. 44(4-5), pages 461-473, July.

Lanjouw, P, \& Rinku Murgai, (2009). ``Poverty decline, agricultural wages, and nonfarm employment in rural India: 1983-2004,'' Agricultural Economics, vol. 40(2), pages 243-263, March.

Lanjouw, Jean O. \& Lanjouw, Peter, (2001). ``The rural non-farm sector: issues and evidence from developing countries,'' Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 1-23, October.

Lefgren, Lars, \& Matthew J. Lindquist, \& David Sims, (2012). ''Rich Dad, Smart Dad: Decomposing the Intergenerational Transmission of Income,'' Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 268-303.

Li, Hongbin, Prashant Loyalka, Scott Rozelle, and Binzhen Wu. (2017). ``Human Capital and China's Future Growth.'' Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (1): 25-48.

Lin, Jing (1999), Social Transformation and Private Education in China, Praeger, CT, USA.

Mazumder, Bhashkar, (2014). ``Black–White Differences in Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the U.S,'' Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q I, pages 1-18.

Mogstad, M (2017). ``The Human Capital Approach to Intergenerational Mobility,'' Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(6), pages 1862-1868.

Motiram, Sripad & Singh, Ashish, (2012). ``How Close Does the Apple Fall to the Tree? Some Evidence on Intergenerational Occupational Mobility from India," WIDER Working Paper Series 101, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

Narayan, A, \& Roy Van der Weide, \& Alexandru Cojocaru, \& Christoph Lakner, \& Silvia Redaelli, \& Daniel Gerszon Mahler, \& Rakesh Gupta N. Ramasubbaiah, \& Stefan Thewissen, (2018). ``Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World,'' World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 28428, March.

Neidhöfer, G, Joaquín Serrano, Leonardo Gasparini (2018), ``Educational inequality and intergenerational mobility in Latin America: A new database'', Journal of Development Economics, Volume 134, 2018, Pages 329-349.

Park, Albert, and X. Zou (2018), One Child Policy and Intergenerational Mobility, Working paper, HUST, Hongkong.

Peng, Yusheng (1998), ``Agriculture, Rural Industries, and Peasant Income in China'', Development and Society, June 1998.

Rama, M, \& Tara Béteille, \& Yue Li, \& Pradeep K. Mitra, \& John Lincoln Newman, (2015). ``Addressing Inequality in South Asia,'' World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 20395, March.

Reddy, A. Bheemeshwar, (2015), ``Changes in Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in India: Evidence from National Sample Surveys, 1983–2012'', World Development, 76, issue C, p. 329-343.

Rozelle, Scott. 1994. ``Rural Industrialization and Increasing Inequality: Emerging Patterns in China’s Reforming Economy.'' Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 19, Iss. 3, pp. 362-391

Sato, Hiroshi and Shi Li. 2007. Class origin, family culture, and intergenerational correlation of education in rural China. IZA Discussion Paper series No. 2642.

Solon, Gary. 1992. ``Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States.” American Economic Review 82(3):393–408.

Solon, Gary. 1999. “Intergenerational Mobility in the Labor Market.” In Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3, ed. O. Ashenfelter and D. Card, Elsevier: Amsterdam, North Holland.

Torche, Florencia. (2015). ``Intergenerational Mobility and Equality of Opportunity,” European Journal of Sociology 56(3): 343–371.

Yang, Dennis Tao and An, Mark Yuying, 2002. “Human capital, entrepreneurship, and farm household earnings, Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 65-88, June.

Wu, Xiaogang, and Donald J. Treiman. (2007), ``Inequality and Equality under Chinese Socialism: The Hukou System and Intergenerational Occupational Mobility." American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 2 (2007): 415-45.